Whoops
by CrazyCoco50
Summary: In an unsurprising turn of events, an unruly author is revisiting and rehashing an old fan favorite episode. Will Danny be able to pull himself together before his parents tear apart his split spirit molecule by molecule? You won't know the half of it.


A new project I'm working on- a twist on the usual Pitch Pearl shenanigans, although one could interpret this as an otherwise pairing-free fiction. This hunk of text is almost completely unedited, except for spellcheck (it was entirely conceived in Notepad.)

I played a little bit with the split personality from Identity Crisis, so neither will refer to the other as 'Danny'. It seems strange that they would considering Danny isn't Danny unless he's 100% there, now does it? So I took the liberty of employing a fan-favorite for his middle name, which I will use to refer to his human persona, rather than the much-more-common Fenton.

Please deposit complaints, critiques, inquiries, ect. in that handy-dandy little box at the bottom, and - though it may come as a shock to some- I do not claim ownership to Danny Phantom. He is Butch Hartman's brainbaby, and I respect that.

* * *

He was going to break that stupid ghost catcher if it was the last thing he did. About two hours ago one Danny Fenton had just finished emptying out his Thermos of all the ghosts he had caught that afternoon. He had been about to fly upstairs to his room- when he had flown straight into the Fenton Ghost Catcher. A familiar shredding sensation overtook him as he was violently torn from his ghost half and ejected to the floor via gravity. When they realized what had happened AGAIN- the phantom picked up his surprisingly durable human half and was just about to join them together when (of course) the almost-never-operational Fenton Ghost Alarm had sounded. Of Course. Then his parents burst into the lab, guns blazing, and the ghost boy had flown invisibly and intangibly through the floor and upwards to their room, other half in tow. Not a split second later the Ghost catcher was eviscerated by Jack's comically large bazooka, erasing all hope of being joined anytime soon.  
The clock read 4:30 as one half of him seethed quietly on the bed, black hair longer and contained with a netted trucker cap, unbuttoned lumberjack shirt engulfing him.  
"Sooo not cool," he muttered, and flopped onto his back, arms spread wide. His cold blue eyes followed the pacing- or whatever the floating equivalent of pacing was- other half of his soul. He had what might have been a pensive face, a frivolous white cape billowing out in a nonexistent wind behind him, adding what should have been mystery, but resulted in a vaguely disgruntled-looking half of a ghost boy. He was muttering none too quietly to himself, green eyes flashing with the active process of deep thought. He stopped suddenly, turning to face the idle human-half.  
"How are we going to get back together now?" He held his hands out as if the answer would fall into them from above. "You know how well we function as parts. We belong inside each other!" The devious chuckle coming from the bed alerted the hero to the implications of the sentence, and his face flushed a deep carmine, "You know what I mean! Why aren't you worried too?" Fenton sits up on the bed.  
"Because, superdweeb," he starts sarcastically, "Mom and Dad trashed the ghost catcher." He crosses his legs and props his chin on his palms, "No sense making myself sick over something I can' t control. Besides, what are you going to say?" He puts on a hyperbolic imitation of Phantom's heroic grin, "'Hey Mom, Dad, it's me, your son Danny! Except not really, because I was torn in two with one of your inventions, which, by the way, broke so if you could just fix that it would be great, thanks.'" he scowls as he finishes. The hero frowns back at him, eyebrows knit in frustration.  
"Well, no, but-"  
"Exactly." He cuts him off, "So for now we chillax. When dinner rolls around, I'll drop a few subtle hints to the 'rents, and by morning, we'll be back to being the one and only Danny."  
"But what if it takes longer than that? Or worse, it doesn't happen at all?" The caped crusader is met with silence.  
"Then we'll figure something out." The reply comes too sharp, too late.  
"You remember the last time we were separated right?" How could they forget? It had been one weekend, and by noon on Sunday they were feeling the effects of bifurcation. A void had arisen, a sort of anti-emotion that was felt more strongly than anything they'd experienced before. And the further and longer they were apart, the bigger that void became, until they'd pulled themselves back through the machine that tore them apart and they became he and he became whole.  
"Duh. But like I said. Nothing we can do right now." A thought occured to him. "You know, we need to be able to call each other something." He tilted his head quizzically.  
"Oh?" His partner reacted in kind, "And why would you say that?"  
"Because we're not Danny unless we're together. Right now, neither of us is the real Danny." He was firm in his belief, and the ghost boy who shared a mind with him knew that he couldn't be swayed.  
"Then what, pray tell, would we call ourselves?"  
"Well obviously you'd be Phantom." The newly dubbed Phantom couldn't argue there. He had no middle name, and since Danny was a title reserved for their original, his surname was the only thing left.  
"Fine, but what about you? I can't just call you Fenton- I'd sound like that hooligan Dash Baxter." his unnamed human half cringed at the word 'hooligan'- it had oldtimey superhero written all over it. Not cool.  
"Then I'll go by our middle name. James." He paused for a moment, "Wait, just call me Jim. James is way too uptight." A grin stretched itself across his face. Phantom could tell exactly what he was thinking[they were the same person after all].  
"I will not duplicate myself, play dead and say 'he's dead, Jim'." he recieved another frown.  
"Oh come on! We won't have another opportunity like this! Just this once?" he pleaded, folding his hands and producing puppy dog eyes. Phantom turned his head and closed his eyes.  
"Nope. And that's final." His boots rested firmly on the ground, a sentiment of his decision. Jim groaned and flopped back onto the bed in defeat.  
"Whatever. And no ghost hunting tonight- the house will be on full lockdown since our parents might have seen us in the basement." Concern flashed across his face. "Do you think they saw us? Y'know- together?" it was hard enough keeping his secret from his parents. If they thought he associated himself with Amity's greatest hero, he'd never be able to get away to go ghost again! That is, if he could pull himself together.  
"...I'm not sure. But you have to act as normal as possible so that Mom and Dad won't be suspicious." Phantom was a little disgruntled under the "no ghost fighting" rule, but it made sense.  
"I can totally handle normal, Phantom. I'm the human half, remember?" Phantom didn't bother to mention the horrible manners and apathetic party-around-the-clock attitude, but the skeptical expression on his face did all the mentioning for him.  
"Okay, no wild parties." a raised eyebrow. "And I'll be the most cultured and like, polite guy ever. The ladies will swoon at my way past cool turn of phrase." He lifted one hand limply to his forehead to simulate one of the aforementioned "ladies". Phantom uncrossed his arms and relaxed a little.  
"Dinner should be ready soon. And since I'm under a virtual house arrest, we might as well get some actual homework done." Now it was Jim's turn for a dissaproving look. He sat up again, but he only grabbed his limp backpack from the ground and dumped its innards onto the bed. For another hour or so they diligently made real progress with their assignments, Jim proving to have a surprising knack for math. Soon enough they heard their mother calling them to supper- likely to be an ectoplasm-soaked lasagna, or something. Jim shrugged and left the room, leaving his other half to pore over the textbooks scattered across the bed.  
He'd just finished an analysis paper for history when Jim came back, patting his stomach contentedly.  
"We ordered out tonight." was all he said.  
"I almost wish I could have been there. Did Dad pitch a fit?" Phantom replied, carefully placing the neatly written document into a waiting folder.  
"Not this time. They were both just in the lab. Apparently they've been scouring every inch of it since we came home." he smirked, "Said something about 'that no-good Danny Phantom'."  
"Did they say anything about Danny iFenton/i?" he asked, putting away the last of their homework.  
"Dude, I don't think they'd have noticed me even if I'd been wearing a sign saying 'I hang out with the ghost kid' written all over it." He flopped face-first onto the bed, "And when I dropped the hint that maybe you wanted the Ghost Catcher destroyed? Well, let's just say they'll be occupied for a few more hours. Told you it would work." Jim grinned triumphantly up at him.  
"I'm glad you were right." Phantom leaned back on his arms, surveying their room. "So, when do you think they'll be finished?"  
"Personally? I'm betting midnight, tops. Dad'll be too excited inot/i to finish, and Mom is gonna have a hard time reigning him in." He stretched out on the bed and lay on his side. "So all we have to do is wait."  
They decided that they'd go downstairs around five the next morning. The rest of the evening passed without incident- Jim had coaxed a reluctant Phantom to play a video game upstairs with him. By curfew he'd become just as into it, obliterating violent space zombies with wild abandon. As Jim tucked himself under the covers Phantom shut off the light, his soft iridescence keeping the room from being engulfed in darkness. He floated a bit awkwardly, not knowing what to do until Jim pat the bed beside him with a yawn, scooting over to make space. He too tucked himself under the soft cotton, most of his ghostly aura muffled by the fabric. Jim turned onto his side, facing away from Phantom but still rather close and muttered, "You're like the world's coolest night light," before settling into a deep slumber. Phantom was left alone with his thoughts.  
"_Could ghosts sleep?_" he mused, and closed his eyes. The next he knew he was being shaken awake rather urgently. His eyes opened sharply, just a little alarmed. "What is it?" he asked, no trace of his not-sleep anywhere.  
"So I woke up and you were still like, sleeping so I went to the lab to see if they were still down there and it was still trashed. Dad left his to-do list and they don't have the parts to fix the stupid catcher yet. They won't for another week!" Jim hissed quietly in the darkness. Another week? They'd barely lasted two days without each other and now they had to last seven?  
"Did you at least put the portal on lockdown?" he asked.  
"Tch, yeah. It'll be bad enough without the attacks." he bit his lip, "What are we going to do?" for once, the laid-back human half sounded... worried. Phantom sat up and laid a gloved hand gently on Jim's shoulder.  
"We'll manage. That's what we're going to do." he used his hero voice, hoping that he sounded confident and in control. Jim set his jaw and nodded. They both hoped against hope that they'd be able to make it to next Friday before that empty hole in each of them ate them from the inside out.


End file.
